How To Make Your Résumé Stand Out
Top tips and advice for making your journalism résumé stand out from the rest of the field; Plus hundreds of new journalism jobs added
Hello folks, happy Tuesday and hope everybody had a good start to the week! Fortunately I had no medical emergencies this weekend, so I was able to finish everything for today’s newsletter dedicated to making your résumé stand out.
More often than not, our résumé is the deciding factor of whether we’re asked back for an interview. So it's crucial we make the best impression possible.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, I’ve applied to hundreds of jobs and internships in my time, and I’ve asked countless numbers of editors and recruiters what makes a good résumé. So in today’s newsletter, I’ll centralize everything I’ve learned over the past decade.
A reminder that paid subscribers can receive personalized résumé/CV feedback, as well as for cover letters and applications. If you’re already a paid subscriber, send the materials you want me to look over to daniellevitt32@gmail.com. If not, subscribe below (cancel any time). Paid subs also receive access to 1,500 active journalism jobs, and membership to our Candidate Board.
In other news, it was 10 years ago today that The Guardian published the first of a series of stories courtesy of Edward Snowden, exposing the NSA and GCHQ’s mass surveillance programs. Spare a thought for Snowden, who remains exiled in Russia. He is a hero.
That’s all from me. Hope you find today’s newsletter helpful and I’ll see you again on Friday for an updated Journalism Awards, Events and Fellowship Deadlines Calendar. Hasta luego! 👋
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How To Make Your Résumé Stand Out
As I mentioned in the intro, I’ve applied to more jobs and internships than I would have liked over the past decade. The good thing about getting rejected so many times is that I have a good sense of what makes a good and bad résumé.
The single biggest thing I’ve picked up along the way is that each organization has its own criteria for what a résumé should look like and contain. It’s very easy to get caught up in trying to cram everything from everyone into a single résumé, and also very tempting to create a template résumé for multiple applications. Don’t do either of these things. Recruiters are smart and will sniff you out. Instead, create a central résumé with a solid spine showing what you’ve done and what type of journalist you are. Then layer on top the preferences of each recruiter according to the specific role you’re applying to.
How long do decision makers spend looking at each résumé? Research suggests that it’s as little as six seconds, depending on the number of candidates and nature of the role. If you’re like me, you’re angry and pissed that you spent hours crafting your résumé only for the recruiter to decide whether you’re good enough in a matter of seconds.
But as The New York Times’ Director of Newsroom Career Programs Theodore Kim illustrated on how competitive it is to work at the NYT, “It is, statistically speaking, 10 times easier to gain acceptance to Harvard. It’s 20 times easier to earn a prestigious slot at West Point. And it’s almost 60 times easier to get admitted to my beloved alma mater, Boston College.
The newsroom received some 5,000 applications for 25 slots for this summer’s program. That means our newsroom internship has an acceptance rate of 0.5 percent — lower than any college in the United States.”
Now, of course the NYT is a special case and not every opening will receive thousands of applications. But if you can adopt the same mindset to every application, you’re only going to improve your chances of getting hired.
With all of that said, here’s the spine that worked well for me and I try to keep to:
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